The Devil's Handshake (6 page)

“
Go to our room Nara,”
Thomas ordered evenly as when punishing their daughter for being
naughty.

Watching her quickly scurry out of the room,
his master’s eyes now normal again, the room fell silent as though
everything was now settled. Thomas focused his eyes on Stephen.

“
I take it that has
satisfied you as suitable punishment and your honor is restored?”
Thomas asked breaking the uneasy silence between them. The butler
nodded.

“
Good, I am certain she
won’t ever do it again! Oh and thank you Pritchard,” Thomas
said.

Taking this as the signal to leave the
difficult meeting, Stephen nodded once more, but this time chose
not to say anything as he left the room for his resignation was no
longer needed, his honor had been restored.

A distressed Nara ran through the house and
up the stairs with tears streaming down her face. The “Gates of
Hell” that had been held back until that moment in Nara’s mind
unlocked and opened with a vengeance and in doing so with it came
all the worst nightmares that she had long forgotten.

The image of her pimp from Turkmenistan, the
man who had purchased her from her Papa as a thirteen-year-old,
manifested in front of her and with it his evil laughter ring
loudly in her ears. Endeavoring to escape from him, Nara fled into
their bedroom.

Nowhere else to run, having hit the wall, she
turned and collapsed to the floor. She began rocking herself with
her arms clutched in front of her legs that were pushed up into her
chest, sobbing loudly.

Thirty minutes later, a distraught and now an
extremely guilty Thomas came up the stairs to their bedroom to find
her. Entering the room he immediately found her in a semi-comatose
state, rocking herself back and forth and staring into the
floor.

“
Oh my God! What have I
done?” he thought in horror as he rushed to her.

He sat down at her side and gently pulled her
under his shoulder. She flinched at his touch. He went to kiss her
head but she pulled away without saying anything.

It was half an hour before the intimacy of
them locked together finally appeared to work its magic. Nara
looked at up him weakly. She attempted to offer him a smile.

Taking it as his cue to make amends, in
response Thomas kissed her hair.

“
I am sorry, my Thomas,” she
said shaking, fearing he might slap her again.

“
Shh,” murmured Thomas
before releasing her. Then without a word he stood and offered his
damp hand for her to take.

“
Nara,” he said simply, his
foolish pride stopping him from apologizing to her for his loss of
his temper despite her unacceptable actions with regard to
Jackie.

Nervously, Nara looked at him for a second.
Despite fearing another assault she, with a touch of hesitation,
took his outstretched hand.

Pulling her up and into his arm, it suddenly
dawned on him by the way she was shaking that she still was
terrified of him.

“
God!” he thought guiltily.
“What have I done?”

Trying to make amends. He leaned down then
kissed her on the lips. She flinched again at his touch.

“
I won’t hurt you my love,”
he whispered.

It was only when he picked her up in his arms
in one movement that Nara started to realize that he was no longer
angry with her.

Nevertheless, still gripped by fear she
carefully placed her arms around his neck while he carried into the
bedroom.

In effort to please him, just had she once
done with Oleg all those years ago, she kissed him on his lips.

“
I am sorry my love,” she
repeated again, earning another. “Shhh,” in return from
Thomas.

“
I am the one at fault,” he
stated.

“
I should know better!” he
admonished himself.

Reaching the bed, Thomas gently placed Nara
on it, stroked her face again and lightly as a feather brushed her
long hair away to the sides while never losing eye contact with
her.

“
Tell me my darling. What
was it?” Thomas had guessed that his raising of his hand and
slapping her had released something terrible from her past in
Turkmenistan.

She nodded, wiping her face with her arm
while releasing a little sniffle. Wanting to please him so his
terrible beast would not return Nara looked up him once more then
started to tell him what had happened to her the afternoon Allah
had sent him to save her.

By the time she finished, with tears in his
eyes, he swore he would never raise his hand again.

3

Ashgabat 1998

In 1998 Ashgabat the capital of Turkmenistan,
unlike the semi-modern self-gloried city it is today, then could
only be described as a typical city of the former Soviet Union with
it rows upon rows of low-rise soviet style buildings and a
population of approximately one million souls.

Led by Saparmurat Niyazov, an old style
communist and his bunch of cronies, the country was a very
necessary, if somewhat corrupt, supplier of natural gas to the
world.

One such crony of the President was Oleg
Mälikgulyýewiç Rejejow. Hailing from Gipchak, the hometown of the
President, through his mother’s side and the son of a former
Turkman General in the Soviet Union, he came from the privileged
set that had ruled through the Communist Party of Turkmenistan
since the twenties.

A bright child who graduated as expected from
Moscow University in the mid-1980s in Foreign Affairs, Oleg had
then joined the KGB. Rising to the rank of Major, before returning
home to Turkmenistan in the early 1990s because of the failure of
the KGB led coup in Moscow.

Ambitious and determined to secure a job in
the new government, he joined the local KGB. Spotted by Niyazov,
who having started his purge of Russians in the State Intelligence
Services wanted Turkmen in the senior officer positions to cement
his power, the President had quickly promoted Oleg to the rank of
Munbashi with a unique responsibility for International
Relations.

In reality, that title was merely a cover to
allow Oleg to put his talents into the setting up of money
laundering operations in Turkey and Germany for US$3 billion the
President had skimmed from the financial exploitation of the
natural resources of his country, while allowing him at the same
time to set up his drug smuggling and prostitution rings. This was
something he did with great effect by the use of violence amongst
the tribes and through killing and torturing at will those who
didn’t fall into line and his use of the President’s name to expand
his empire. As a direct result, he was considered one of the most
powerful members of the President’s entourage.

Possessing a stocky build and a rounded face
with closed puffy eyes that made him look as if he were a nasty,
aggressive temple dog guarding its territory—It was a look that
only reinforced his legend.

Although debt collection was considered an
Onbashi task, Oleg somewhat perversely rather enjoyed it and as
such he took great delight performing this chore himself.

On the night he had entered Nara’s life, he
was planning to torture her father, but when the bloodied,
desperate man had offered up his daughter as security for his debt
by showing and giving him a blood stained photograph of her, the
brutal enforcer had changed his mind and instead accepted the
beautiful angelic looking child instead.

From that moment on Nara’s, who was just
thirteen at the time, remaining childhood turned into a hellish
nightmare that often returned to haunt her at night in the
following years.

To survive, she quickly developed street
smarts: teaching herself English by watching movies from America,
learning to mask her emotions and keeping herself in shape by
staying off the drugs, while throughout constantly telling Oleg she
loved him when pleasuring him to ensure she remained one of his
favorite concubines.

In order to survive this continuing torment
over years, the pretty teenager created a private place in her mind
where she would escape to, that place was “an ocean of
tranquility—blue clear water under a cloudless sky” and had been so
ever since her parents took her to the Caspian Sea when she was a
child.

Although Nara had never seen a real ocean, as
Oleg would never allow his favorite concubine to leave
Turkmenistan, it had remained her dream to reach it. Today she
hoped that it would finally come true by the repayment of her
father’s debt so allowing her to escape to Dubai!

When Nara had told her mother of her plan to
repay him the twenty thousand U.S. dollars of her father’s debt,
the total sum she had managed to squirrel away from the tips of the
men and women who used her body, her mother had insisted as per
their tribal law that she should go with her as the family
representative. She had reasoned that there would be a need for a
witness as her father had drunk himself to death on cheap
“jet-fuel” vodka over the guilt of what he forced his daughter
into. Despite arguing heavily with her and against her better
judgment, Nara had allowed her mother to come with her.

Arriving at his office next door to the newly
built Sheraton Grand Hotel, neither Nara nor her mother had any
idea of how the next forty-five minutes would mold, change, and
shape their family’s destiny forever.

Walking into the office they were met at the
door by his best man and enforcer who was wearing a cheap green
suit, shirt, and white tie made by a Pakistani tailor from Lahore,
a pair of cheap black shoes, and his pistol showing under his
jacket. He smelled of the strong perfume that men from the Middle
East often wore to mask their body odor known as Yuri Karajaýewiç
Gorbunow.

A typical looking Turkman with a Chinese look
to his face, dark thick hair with obsidian dead eyes, stocky in
build, around 5’8” and had a body of 210 pounds of rock hard
muscle. A veteran of Afghanistan, where as a member with the 105th
Guard’s airborne division, he had earned a fearsome reputation as a
sadistic, brutal killer who took enjoyment in celebrating his kills
by removing the ears of the Mujahideen with his hunting knife. He
had always desired Nara ever since Oleg had once, as a reward for a
particular job well done, given him access to her young body.

The beautiful teenager felt her entire body
shiver, a reaction she always felt when he looked upon her with his
leering smile. Today this terror was even worse, for Nara could
have sworn she saw him lick his lips the second he set eyes on her
mama.

“
The Boss will see you in
five minutes; he is just finishing with an important client,” he
stated as he continued to leer at her and her mother. Forcing her
troubled mind to acknowledge him, Nara did so with a polite “thank
you,” followed by a forced smile, her only weapon in an attempt to
disarm him.

An attractive looking forty year-old woman,
Tania, possessed looks that would be best be described as similar
to that of her daughter. Her face had the same high naturally
puffed up cheeks, extremely thinly plucked eyebrows, deep brown
eyes with one or two laughter lines surrounded by dark eyelashes
and her natural pout smile and luscious lips framed with long jet
black hair gave an observer a direct link to Nara. Yet because she
was 5’4” in height and had a naturally bronzed, fuller, curvy
figure, something that was reinforced by her ample breasts and
larger rounded bottom compared to that of her daughter who was six
inches taller than her, she was considered curvy rather than
statuesque.

A full-time secretary who worked for a bank
as did many women in her country who worked to support their ethnic
Russian husbands who had lost their jobs. She was a proud woman who
had absolutely hated her husband for what he had done to their
daughter through his weakness and had lost no sleep when he died
from a heart attack, sadly, so different to the young Engineer of
the Oil Refinery under the days of the Soviets that had married
her. It was why, despite her fears, she had accompanied her
daughter today.

To look conservative, Tania had insisted that
they dress in a more formal way by wearing red and green long one
piece dresses. Unfortunately as Nara grimly reflected by the look
of Yuri, it certainly hadn’t worked.

In contrast to him, as they sat down to wait
their turn, Nara noticed the man standing opposite them was a truly
different sort of individual.

A tall, striking man with short military
style blonde hair, piercing blue eyes and a solid muscular frame he
was dressed in an expensively tailored simple, but elegant, dark
blue suit, light blue shirt, and dark blue tie by a designer Nara
immediately assumed was Italian. With his pistol nestling
discreetly underneath his jacket and his feet shod in an expensive
pair of dark tanned English style shoes; he looked the polar
opposite in class and style to Yuri.

The man known as Mikhail Olegovich
Pshenicnikov she would later find out, she realized was assessing
her but then without saying a word, he put Nara quickly at ease by
smiling at her and then respectively offered a nod towards her
mother.

Having spotted Mikhail’s respectful actions,
Yuri decided to mark his territory almost as was a dog cocking his
leg by retorting, “You can’t afford her Mikhail!” while laughing at
his own joke.

It was spiteful comment that immediately sent
a shiver down Nara’s spine. She hated it when men treated her as a
piece of meat, evermore so as it was in front of her mama.

Seeing that her daughter was biting her lip
and knowing that she was worried and nervous, Tania put her hand
across hers gently and patted it, almost to imply it didn’t matter
in an effort to comfort her. The young lady smiled in response
towards her mother but didn’t say anything. She also caught sight
of the polite man shooting Yuri a look, dismissing him for the
prick he was. It warmed her as he turned again towards them and
repeated his respectful nod again.